What is it like to write a doctoral dissertation? As Earl Bennett said, it’s kind of like being a Chicago Bears veteran at the end of August.
There aren’t many people in this world who can make that kind of connection, but intersectionality is what Bennett is all about these days.
Bennett can say he made it through six training camps in Bourbonnais, Ill., and one successfully defended his dissertation at the University of Houston. Who else can say they’ve pulled off that combination?
The wide receiver, who spent his entire six-year NFL career with the Bears, earned his doctorate in philosophy from the higher education leadership and policy studies department at the university in December, with a dissertation titled “Advancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in University Athletic Departments.”
“Dissertation mode to me was like the third week of (training) camp,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “You don’t want to be there. It’s hot. Your body’s tired. You hate every play call. You hate being in Bourbonnais. You hate getting in the car trying to go find a restaurant. And somehow, you find a way to persevere through it all.”
HOODED #PhD #Dr.Bennett pic.twitter.com/FxTGprce3D
— Earl B. Bennett, PhD (@EarlBBennett) December 18, 2022
In recent years, you’ve had John Urschel, Myron Rolle and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif as examples of NFL players with doctorates or MDs Scores of NFL players go back to school when their playing careers are over to finish their undergraduate degrees, but how many keep going, as Bennett did, especially when they have money, a family, business investments and a full-time job?
That’s what Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea wanted to know while hiring Bennett, now the executive director of player development and administration at Vanderbilt, to work at his alma mater before the 2021 season.
“(Lea) goes, ‘So for the past two years, you’ve been doing your job at a high level, you also manage to stay married, and your kids are thriving. But then also, you finish this Ph.D. program,’” Bennett said. “He was just like, ‘How?'”
For those two years, during the work week, Bennett said he would get into the football office at 6 am and write for two hours. He would then put his dissertation out of his mind to do his job working with Vanderbilt football players and the athletic department. When he got home, he went into family mode with his wife, Rekeshia, his son, Earl Jr., and his daughter, Skylah.
Any successful professional athlete has to be able to compartmentalize. Bennett just hasn’t stopped. Many struggle with work-life balance. He seems to have figured something out.
“There was no way that once I got into that program, I wasn’t going to finish it,” he said. “That just wasn’t an option for me.”
Sure, he added Ph.D. to his social media profile, but just in case you think he’s getting a big head, Bennett said his children keep him level-headed.
“It’s just like, ‘Oh, so you’re a doctor now, you’re big-time, Dad,'” he said with a laugh.
His colleagues at Vanderbilt have had some fun, as well, putting “Dr.” on his office nameplate.
Bennett is an official SEC Legend and is still second all-time in the conference with 236 receptions, behind former Vanderbilt receiver/current San Francisco 49ers tight end Jordan Matthews and ahead of former Alabama and current Philadelphia Eagles wideout DeVonta Smith. But these days, he’s more comfortable getting a young receiver an internship with Google than he is watching videos with him.
Bennett, who does watch a little footage with players, works with the football staff in recruiting, and he focuses a lot of time on volunteering with the team and helping players adjust to an academically rigorous university.
“I do most of the programming for our football players,” he said. “That’s mentorship. That’s internships. That’s community service. That’s NIL, which is a monster in itself. That’s parent relations. It never ends, but it’s also a lot of fun.”
Bennett finished his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt in 2015, a year after he retired from the NFL, then tacked on a master’s degree in 2018. He was halfway through his doctoral program at Houston when Lea reached out about employment.
They talked about the role, but when it came time to accept, Bennett kept putting off Lea. He and his family had a nice life in The Woodlands, located just outside Houston. Bennett wasn’t expecting to go back to football. After the 2013 NFL season, he rejected a pay cut with the Bears to become a free agent. He was released by the Cleveland Browns that summer, and he said when a Minnesota Vikings rep told him they’d take care of his knees (he blew out a knee in high school) with rest and painkilling shots, he decided to retire at 27 .
“I was like, ‘That’s the last thing I need.’ If you look at cortisone shots, they don’t really help,” Bennett said. “They make it worse in the long term.”
When Bennett retired from the league, his resume read “NFL receiver.” He wanted to be a professor or work in higher education, and the open job with the athletic department was almost exactly what he was working on in his doctorate. It seemed meant to be, so he and Rekeshia debated Lea’s offer. They prayed over it. And as often happens, they found clarity.
“We sat down and we agreed that this place will be the best for not just my professional career, but the development of our family,” he said. “We decided to move (to Tennessee), and everything has been amazing. … This has been the best place that we could have landed in terms of starting my executive career.”
Now that he’s done with his doctoral program, he said his goal is to be an athletic director like his mentor at Vanderbilt, Dr. Candice Storey Lee, or an NFL team president. He has no interest in being a coach or working on the football side of a front office. Even as an undergrad with eyes on making the NFL, Bennett said he felt like he had more to offer than football.
His dissertation focus changed after enrolling in the program. In the final version, he wanted to explore the idea that as universities started to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, athletic departments were lagging behind.
“One of the reasons I wanted to look at that particular topic is, you’re starting to see different buzzwords like ‘diversity, inclusion and equity,’ and people don’t really understand how that relates to higher education, let alone higher- education athletic departments,” he said. “Being in this space for the past two years, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge of how to start to dissect and find ways to make athletics more inclusive.”
When Bennett was first a student at Vanderbilt, in 2004, he said he was more confident about playing in the SEC than his ability to fit in with the student body of a wealthy private college. He grew up as the youngest of five in a single-parent household in Birmingham, Ala., and was thrust into a completely different environment.
“I had to understand the importance of intersectionality from a sense of knowing that I was an athlete, but there was so much more to me,” he said. “I had to embrace those multiple identities. Coming to Vanderbilt, I didn’t feel like I belonged, initially, and I think part of that is because I had a 16 ACT score, and the head coach (banged) on the table for me to get in.
“I knew I could play. I was always very confident in my skill set. But as a student, it took me about a year and a half to get my footing. Just because I didn’t feel like I belonged. I didn’t feel like my uniqueness was really embraced on campus during those times.”
And now he’s back on that campus, showing other students how to be confident and how they can make it a better place.
He enjoys living in Nashville, the home of many retired athletes. He jokes that parent breakfasts at his children’s school are like an NFL alumni event. He has found new friends through that community, including former Bears player Jared Allen, who joined the team after Bennett left.
After a short-but-productive NFL career (185 receptions, 2,277 yards and 12 touchdowns) and a reinvention as an academic, Bennett finds himself as a still-young man with a thirst for knowledge and a desire to make an impact.
“Our goal is to always advance society,” he said. “The way you do that is to push yourself into those positions to actually do it. You have to be a part of it. For me, one of my favorite quotes from Malcolm X is that you can always chase a dream, but it will never count if you never catch it. I want to catch all my dreams.”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos courtesy of Earl Bennett; Matt Sullivan/Getty Images)
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